The Role of Patients and their Health Cards in Integrated eHealth Environments

Communication and co-operation processes in healthcare and welfare require the involvement of all parties involved, including health professionals as well as patients. Generally, professionals can and will easily communicate via trusted health networks. To enforce both communication and co-operation between professionals and patients and to guarantee the required degree of involvement of patients in shared care environments, smart cards are widely used. They serve as person identifiers on the one hand and as security token on the other hand. Acting as storage media and portable application systems, patient data cards enable patient-controlled exchange and the use of personal health data for specific purposes such as prescription and disease management. Additionally, patient status data such as the emergency data or the immunisation record may be stored in and communicated by patient data cards.